"She was the light that made each of our lives worth living." Paul Schrader's 2018 words of praise for Taylor Swift before a crowd of 70,000 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., and Reflected on cinema screens around the world. This concert film has no fluff, no prologue, no overture, but instead slams into a countdown, ticking away in the final seconds until the show begins. Just when the lights went out, a girl in the audience spoke. "Oh my gosh, I should have asked for permission, but we're all going to sing, right?" she pleads in the darkness. "Because I want to sing!" replied a woman sitting in the front row: "Sing loud and sing proud, sister."
If you want an in-depth look at Swift's career, there's Miss America, if you If you want to understand her creative process, there is "Folklore: Long Pond Recording Studio", and what "Taylor Swift: Journey of the Times" does is to bring this grand concert to people around the world. Each of Swift's ten albums has its own tone, style, and point of view, and it seems impossible to bring them all together into one show. However, even though some of these songs were written 20 years ago, all of them fit into the larger aesthetic and thematic story that Swift and Time Tour are telling. At each stop on the tour, Swift performs two surprise songs, and in the movie, it's a clever pairing: "Our Song," played on acoustic guitar, brings some excitement to an otherwise neglected debut album. focus on. Then, she plays “you’re on your own, kid” on the piano, and the adult Taylor looks back with sympathy on the nervous, always trying too hard teenage Taylor, the once hopeless child. It's a conversation that spans 17 years, but you also hear that both Taylors are the same conflicted and authentic woman.
's concert didn't arrange her 10 albums in chronological order, but rather around changes in tempo, switching back and forth between energetic melodies and brooding melodious tunes. Swift begins with the hazy reverie of "Lover" (2019), then turns back time on her breakthrough album "Fearless" (2008), with flowing fringes giving way to the cottage comfort of "Evermore" (2020). She sat alone at the moss-covered piano and played "champagne problems" before a giant snake pulled up the rug and threw her back into the manic existential crisis of "reputation" (2017). When she transitions from free-spirited melodies to restrained tunes, or from pop songs to folk songs, it all seems so natural and smooth, and songs like "blank space" and "shake it off" give the sense of The impact was perfectly offset by the tenderness of her early songs and the 10-minute version of "all too well." "folklore" is the part of the movie where Taylor is sweating profusely, which fits well with the "party it up" style of the song. The most intense howl from the audience that night came from the section of "illicit affairs" when Taylor fell to her knees and roared: "Don't call me baby! Don't call me baby!"
The entire concert began at a stage in Swift's career. It flows beautifully to the next level, sounding less like the different songs that Swift has produced in the past two decades and more like the stories from one of her albums. Not only that, each stage feels like a mini-concert with its own visual language. "folklore" is a flowing white dress, a moss-covered domestic setting, haunting close-ups; "reputation" is a snake-covered bodysuit, black and white graphics deliberately staccato; in "the “Last Great American Dynasty,” in which Swift revels in the Gilded Age, works like a ball in Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence”; “willow,” the most daring sequence, features a coven of art-goth witches and Taylor's Halloween witches gather together in black cloaks and glowing orange pumpkin balls; for a rendition of "all too well," the set is pared down to almost nothing — no twirling dancers, no elaborate The set, and there was no eye-catching video, was just Swift and her guitar, standing alone in the center of a giant stage.Yet her words, her passionate delivery, make her account of a doomed love as vivid and intimate as our own deepest memories.
Watching all the chapters of her career unfold, one can't help but marvel at how she has transformed herself over the years. In "look what you made me do," Swift walks past dancers dressed in Taylor costumes from other eras, and in Plexiglas boxes they look like a row of Barbie dolls. And just like Barbie, Swift's longevity seems rooted in her ability to continually reinvent herself and to make all of her contradictory selves add up to an idealized whole. But equally interesting is what she hasn’t changed. Whether she's casting herself as a fresh country girl or a bitter outcast, Swift's strength as a musician lies not in her voice but in her songwriting.
Data shows that the movie "Taylor Swift: The Age of Concert Tour" ended its release on March 12, with a total box office of 101 million, breaking 35 records so far.
Director Sam Renzi once directed "billie eilish" : live at the o2" and "bts: permission to dance on stage - la" and other concert films, he brings the audience closer to Swift, even if they have seen her live performances and know how she presents these songs, because even if Even the best seats do not allow the audience to watch closely, but the dancers' exaggerated facial expressions in "The Man" and the gorgeous skills in "Lover" can be fully displayed here. There's something more important to consider about the intimacy that the big screen offers, like how expertly Swift sings about genuine anger in "all too well," or the more playful moments like "blank space" and "vigilante shit." How to express anger in a comedic way in songs. In "tolerate it," viewers get a closer look at Swift and one of her backup singers as they reenact a harrowing dinner scene from "Citizen Kane," in which the singer ends up crawling across a long table , facing her distant lover. The screen is clear enough that you can read the label on the bottle before she knocks it off the table.
Although Swift leaves the more complex dance moves to her backup dancers, she is a master of self-expression. After nearly two decades of public scrutiny, she knows exactly how to wink, fake a smile or bend over to look as flirtatious, naughty or sexy as she needs to be. What's more, she knows how to embody the many contradictions she needs. The woman on stage was both powerful enough to make the crowd scream and yet so humble that she claimed she felt guilty and even asked the audience to let her sing one more song before she left. She's been a successful musician longer than she's been an adult, but she still gushed at her debut, "I can't believe I get to make music as a career." Is this humility possible? Sincerity doesn't matter. What's important is that her performance was flawless, convincing those who wanted to believe that this was a person who was dedicated to music. This may also be her most moving contradiction. Swift is a singer-songwriter who has built her career on love songs, but what she seems to cherish most is not her much-discussed celebrity boyfriends, but her fans.
The photographer kept moving the camera to capture various angles, including grand scenes from above. For example, when Swift walked to the center of the stage, her back was turned to the audience, and thousands of luminous wristbands With the glitter behind her, there are also close-ups where you can see not only the teary-eyed fans, but even a glimpse of Swift's nail polish, mascara and the sweat dripping down her cheeks. The mix clearly conveys Swift's energetic vocals, but also lets crowd noise seep in around the edges, and at times you can't tell if the cheers are coming from the movie or the theater. In order to be faithful to the live concert experience, the film has no behind-the-scenes footage or interviews, the time between performances has been shortened, giving the impression of a seamless transition from one song to the next, and costume changes appear to take place in seconds. It was completed within a few minutes, with Swift singing and dancing almost the entire time.By the end of the movie, the audience may be more exhausted than Swift, but they are also reminded that her career is so special that three hours is simply not enough to sum it up.
text/Feng Xinping
source/Beijing Youth Daily client
editor/Qiao Ying
